Abstract LB-129: Identifying tumor subpopulations and the functional consequences of intratumor heterogeneity using single-cell profiling of breast cancer patient-derived xenografts

Proceedings: AACR 106th Annual Meeting 2015; April 18-22, 2015; Philadelphia, PA Human breast tumors have been shown to exhibit extensive inter- and intra-tumor heterogeneity. While recent advances in genomic technologies have allowed us to deconvolute this heterogeneity, few studies have addressed the functional consequences of diversity within tumor populations. Here, we identified an index case for which we have derived a patient-derived xenograft (PDX) as a renewable tissue source to identify subpopulations and perform functional assays. On pathology, the tumor was an invasive ductal carcinoma which was hormone receptor-negative, HER2-positive (IHC 2+, FISH average HER2/CEP17 2.4), though the FISH signal was noted to be heterogeneous. On gene expression profiling of bulk samples, the primary tumor and PDX were classified as basal-like. We performed single cell RNA and exome sequencing of the PDX to identify population structure. Using a single sample predictor of breast cancer subtype, we have identified single basal-like, HER2-enriched and normal-like cells co-existing within the PDX tumor. Genes differentially expressed between these subpopulations are involved in proliferation and differentiation. Functional studies distinguishing these subpopulations are ongoing. Microfluidic whole genome amplification followed by whole exome capture of 81 single cells showed high and homogeneous target enrichment with >75% of reads mapping uniquely on target. Variant calling using GATK and Samtools revealed founder mutations in key genes as BRCA1 and TP53, as well as subclonal mutations that are being investigated further. Loss of heterozygocity was observed in 16 TCGA cancer driver genes and novel mutations in 7 cancer driver genes. These findings may be important in understanding the functional consequences of intra-tumor heterogeneity with respect to clinically important phenotypes such as invasion, metastasis and drug-resistance. Citation Format: Paul Savage, Sadiq M. Saleh, Ernesto Iacucci, Timothe Revil, Yu-Chang Wang, Nicholas Bertos, Anie Monast, Hong Zhao, Margarita Souleimanova, Keith Szulwach, Chandana Batchu, Atilla Omeroglu, Morag Park, Ioannis Ragoussis. Identifying tumor subpopulations and the functional consequences of intratumor heterogeneity using single-cell profiling of breast cancer patient-derived xenografts. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 106th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2015 Apr 18-22; Philadelphia, PA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2015;75(15 Suppl):Abstract nr LB-129. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2015-LB-129